If you look at Wikipedia’s Pangaea animation, you can see that Alaska was always near the north pole. The Canadian geologist Steve McIntyre put Chu vs Baron on page 1 today.

The point of Barton’s is obvious. The world was much warmer hundreds of millions of years ago (and sea levels were probably also much higher).

So was Chu clueless, or does he afraid to admit this is true, and spawn more AGW doubters?

The long term temperature on earth has been declining, and its a good thing, because the earth probably started out as a fireball. This is not really relevant to CO2/Global warming, but Chu’s response reinforces my feeling that most political types are clueless.

Nonsense came from Boehner, when he tried to associate EPA regulation of CO2 to cancer. Clearly there is more to EPA regulation than just cancer.

Polosi stated that we should be using natural gas rather than fossil fuels.

Waxman recently stated that if we don’t do something about global warming the tundra will evaporate.

They passed the Daylight Savings Time law to save energy, and there is an Indiana study that shows it wastes energy, so I expect them to do the same with well meaning CO2 laws.

And I’d rather have intelligence involved in ANY decision-making process, ESPECIALLY at these levels of policy-making.

>”It seems that Humanity also thrives more when temps are warner, not colder.”
Don’t you think you’re oversimplifying here?
Or why do you think we live on EARTH and not Mercury?

If you think you stumped Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, then you are not someone that should be making decisions that involve science because science is way beyond your comprehension level.

As to AGW, it has not been proved. The models developed by proponents to support it or opponents to deny it are flawed and can not be considered as proof. Why? Any computer model must reflect all (or at least a very high percentage of) the variables that effect the outcome. Scientists are not sure of the all the cycles or variability of cycles that effect the orbit of the sun, the orbit of earth, the heating, cooling, and fluctuations of ocean currents, albedo effects of cosmic rays relative to solar and planetary magnetic fields, Solar maximums and minimums, etc. Need I go on? Yet politicians are being focused by Al “the sky is falling” Gore and others in manner that will expend incredible amounts of money to fix a problem that has not actually been proven to exist.

Certainly the impact of Human activity on this planet is evident. Does it effect the climate? Probably. To the extent the fearmongers rant on about? Probably not. Do we really want to reduce that atmospheric trace element CO2? Probably not since plant life thrives on it, and we thrive when plants thrive. It seems that Humanity also thrives more when temps are warner, not colder.

Anaconda’s rant is equally spurious. We just don’t know. Climate scientists need to keep acquiring the data necessary to provide answers to the climate puzzle. The “we’re out of time” hype, is just that. Hype.